A pending U.S. patent application, Ser. No. 902,997,filed on even date, is entitled, Optoelectronics Package For A Semiconductor Laser. An optical fiber assembly according to the invention is suitable for coupling to a semiconductor laser of the optoelectronics package disclosed in the pending application.
In many applications emission from a laser must be coupled into an optical fiber. Coupling between an optical fiber and a semiconductor laser is subject to disadvantages and requires a high degree of car in fabrication. A direct attachment of an optical fiber to the laser can be disrupted, because the operating temperature of the laser will fluctuate and cause different dimensional changes respectively in the fiber and the laser. The dimensional changes in response to temperature fluctuation will cause the fiber to change position with respect to the laser or become separated from the laser.
Direct coupling is generally inefficient because of a wide disparity in the dimensions of the guided modes in the laser and in the fiber. This can be overcome by the use of a lens for mode size matching.
An optical coupling is subject to further disadvantages arising from use of a lens to focus optical emission from a laser on an optical fiber. It is difficult to achieve precision optical alignment of the lens and the laser. The fiber can become misaligned due to dimensional changes with temperature fluctuations.